"Why do you speak Spanish?"

After a technology orientation session today, upon reading my name tag and seeing that I'm a Spanish professor, an older professor asked me the above question.

Huh?

Why do I speak Spanish?

What an odd phrasing.  I actually responded that way to her, repeating the question and emphasizing the "why."  

"Well, yes, does your family speak Spanish or did you learn it...?"

Ah.  Now I get it.

You see, I'm also curious to know why someone chose to pursue the study of Spanish.  In such an event, I, and I'd venture, most people, would ask, "Why did you choose Spanish?" or "What made you interested in Spanish?"

But, why do you speak it?

The way she asked was very bothersome to me for a few reasons:

1. "Why do you speak Spanish?" would never be asked of a non-person of color.  It's assumed that if a non-person of color with a non-Hispanic name has the ability to speak Spanish, it's because they learned it.  But since I am a person of color, even though I do not have a Hispanic name or any other cultural markers which would somehow imply that Spanish is (one of) my native language(s), it's not assumed that I learned it.  Why is that?

2. Connected to point #1, "Why do you speak Spanish?" could imply that it somehow defies expectations or norms that I would/could speak Spanish.  Not that there's anything wrong with a situation defying someone's expectations.  But why does the prospect of a woman of color learning a second language defy expectations?  That's the real question.  What are your expectations of me and why?

3. Since I'm brown-skinned and perhaps ethnically ambiguous-looking to some people, asking "Why do you speak Spanish" is also shorthand for "What is your ethnicity, and is your ethnicity connected to your interest in/ability to speak Spanish?"  It highly bothers me when people I literally do not even know have a desire to place me, simply to satisfy their own curiosity.

First of all, how I identify is none of your business, even if it isn't readily apparent to you, especially if you don't know me, aren't really interested in fostering a relationship with me, and we haven't been engaged in a conversation where I happened to mention my racial identity or where my racial identity is even relevant in any way whatsoever.  Second of all, regular old black people, not ones with some kind of "exotic," "not-just-black" essence, as some seem keen to assign to me, just straight up born and raised in the U.S., raised by two black parents also born and raised in the U.S., can be and are interested in and have the capacity to learn foreign languages.  This should not be a mind-boggling prospect.

Why do I speak Spanish?  For the same reason you do anything you do, lady.  Because I want to.